The Polo Lounge

Eighty Years of Breakfast, Deals, and Bougainvillea

Beverly Hills has cycled through restaurant trends since the 1940s, Japanese-Californian tasting counters like Hayato, ambitious New Taiwanese programs like Kato, and molecular progressives like Somni have all reshaped what serious dining means in Los Angeles. The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel has watched all of it from the same pink-striped booths since 1941. That kind of institutional continuity is rare anywhere; in a city that dismantles and rebuilds its dining identity every decade, it is something closer to geological.

The restaurant opened as a gathering place for the polo-playing set that gave it its name, and the clientele shifted quickly toward Hollywood's working elite. Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, and Fred Astaire were among the regulars who used the patio and bar as an informal extension of the studio lot, a place to be seen doing business, or to be seen not doing business. That culture of strategic visibility never left.

The Scene as the Main Course

American Classic dining at this price tier, the cuisine runs $$$ by Opinionated About Dining's reckoning, meaning a typical two-course meal comes in above $66 before beverages, generally asks guests to justify the spend through either culinary ambition or institutional atmosphere. The Polo Lounge makes no apology for leaning hard into the second category. The dining room's large glass windows are retractable, opening fully onto a patio bordered by dense greenery and bougainvillea draped across exterior alcoves. The visual effect is a carefully maintained version of Old Hollywood's idea of California outdoor living, and it still works.

The most requested seats are Booths 1, 2, and 3, positioned directly in front of the entrance with sightlines to the bar and the arriving crowd. The seating preference is not accidental; the Polo Lounge functions as much as a social stage as a restaurant, and the booth hierarchy is part of the architecture of that stage. The crowd on any given lunch service tends toward entertainment-industry figures, international visitors who have been coming for years, and a contingent of regulars for whom the room is as much habit as destination.

Live music runs through most of the day, a pianist or a singer-guitarist depending on the hour, and Sunday brunch formats around a live jazz trio performing for the duration of service. This kind of sustained programming is more common in hotel dining than in standalone restaurants, and it reinforces the Polo Lounge's identity as a room you occupy rather than pass through quickly.

The Kitchen Under Chef Michael Santoro

The editorial angle that matters most at a restaurant of this vintage is not where the chef trained but what the kitchen is being asked to do: hold a set of dishes that function as institutional memory while maintaining enough technical discipline to justify current pricing. Chef Michael Santoro operates within those constraints alongside Ashley James in the kitchen, and the menu reflects a deliberate commitment to continuity over reinvention.

The Dutch apple pancakes, served with sour cream and heirloom apples, and the tortilla soup have appeared on the menu long enough to qualify as signatures rather than simply dishes. The tortilla soup arrives with grilled chicken, queso fresco, green onion, avocado, and crispy tortilla strips; the McCarthy salad, named after a polo-playing patron, layers romaine, chicken, eggs, red beets, tomatoes, cheddar, applewood-smoked bacon, avocado, and balsamic vinaigrette. These dishes have the kind of specificity that comes from repetition over decades, not from a seasonal tasting menu rethought each quarter.

Dinner extends into more conventional steakhouse territory: a 10-ounce prime rib eye with whipped potatoes, roasted mushrooms, grilled balsamic red onions, and bordelaise sauce. The West Hollywood salad, quinoa, farro, kale, spinach, mizuna, garbanzo beans, hearts of palm, golden raisins, toasted sunflower seeds, feta, and preserved-lemon vinaigrette, sits at the other end of the spectrum, addressing the California health-conscious palate that has always coexisted with the steakhouse side of the menu. That balance between old-guard American cooking and lighter California sensibility is one of the defining tensions in Los Angeles dining broadly, visible in very different ways at places like Osteria Mozza and Providence.

The Wine Program

Wine Director Csaba Oveges oversees a list of 1,270 selections backed by a 20,000-bottle inventory, a scale that puts it well above most standalone restaurant programs in Los Angeles. The list concentrates strength in California, Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne, a profile that mirrors the tastes of a clientele that has been ordering at this address for decades. Corkage is set at $75. For comparison, the wine programs at ambitious independents like Lazy Bear in San Francisco or The French Laundry in Napa operate at similar inventory depth but with stronger somm-driven curation toward emerging regions. The Polo Lounge list is built for depth in the classic categories, not for discovery.

Afternoon Tea and the Friday-Saturday Calendar

Friday and Saturday afternoon tea services fill well in advance and represent a distinct category within the weekly programming. The format sits between the full dining experience and the bar, drawing a different mix than the lunch or dinner crowds and positioning the Polo Lounge within a broader tradition of hotel afternoon tea that is more common in London or Hong Kong, where places like 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo Bombana occupy adjacent luxury hotel territory, than in Los Angeles. Sunday brunch leans toward a three-course format with dishes including almond-crusted French toast and corned beef hash, accompanied by the jazz trio throughout service.

Dress Code and Practical Notes

The atmosphere reads formal in its bones, the booths, the piano, the sightlines, but the dress code in practice runs smart-casual for daytime. Seersucker and tennis shoes are acceptable; flip-flops are not. The current latitude on women's dress code traces directly to Marlene Dietrich, who as a Beverly Hills Hotel resident in the 1940s persuaded management to lift the ban on slacks for women, a detail that has become part of the room's documented history.

Planning Your Visit: How the Polo Lounge Compares

The Polo Lounge is open seven days a week, 7 am to 11 pm. It sits at 9641 Sunset Blvd, Beverly Hills. For the broader Los Angeles dining picture, see our full Los Angeles restaurants guide, alongside our Los Angeles hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide.